


A Real Home

by TWDObsessive



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Affection, Caring, Child Abuse, Cuddling & Snuggling, Daryl is four, Developing Friendships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Slash, No Smut, Platonic Cuddling, Rick is the babysitter, sexual situations mentioned in part two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 21:05:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10816752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TWDObsessive/pseuds/TWDObsessive
Summary: Rick Grimes answers an ad to babysit on Friday nights over at the Terminus Trailer Park.  Four-year old Daryl Dixon is easy to take care of, but as Rick and Daryl grow closer, Rick realizes Daryl is in real trouble.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd
> 
> This will be a two chapter fic. I've been wanting to write Daryl as a child for ages so I took a quick break from my College AU to stretch my legs with this little Two-shot.
> 
> Chapter two will include a time jump to Daryl at sixteen. There will be talk of sexual situations at that point but still no smut or slash.

Rick liked kids. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters but the younger kids in the neighborhood always seemed to be drawn to him. At fifteen he was starting to hold high hopes for a car in his future so when he saw an ad for a babysitter at the nearby trailer park he jumped at the opportunity to make a few dollars. His parents weren’t too happy about him taking a job at the Terminus Trailer Park. They lived within walking distance of it but it was “on the other side of the tracks”, so to speak. Rick pulled out some of his skills from debate class and managed to convince them that the kids in the trailer park deserved a good babysitter just as anyone else in their neighborhood did.

Mr. Dixon was paying twenty-five bucks a night every Friday and Daryl wasn’t any trouble at all. Rick sometimes felt guilty taking the cash at the end of the night. At the beginning, Rick mostly did it for the money he was saving, but after a few months, he found himself taking the job each week because he wanted to spend time with the kid.

Daryl Dixon was four going on five and the first time Rick babysat, he barely saw him. Daryl had spent the evening in his room under his bed watching Rick out in the living room as he sat in front of the TV. The next week, Rick brought over his old DVD of The Fantastic Mr. Fox and he watched it, laughing and telling Daryl he should come out and join him. About half-way through, the little guy slinked up to the couch holding his stuffed squirrel and sucking his thumb. “Does this show have a squirrel?” he asked around his thumb. 

“I don’t know, buddy. Why don’t you come up and watch with me and we’ll find out!”

Daryl stood at the end of the couch, long eyelashes cast down at his feet as he kicked at the sofa. “Do you live here now?”

“No, I’m the babysitter, Rick. That means we get to play for a few hours while you’re Daddy’s at work,” Rick explained. 

Daryl climbed up on the recliner and watched Rick through suspicious, narrowed eyes, a little pout forming on his lips. 

“Pa don’t work at night. He’s drinkin’,” Daryl said, looking incredibly tiny in the oversized chair.

“Yeah, I did notice that last week,” Rick laughed. He was so glad Daryl came out this time. He looked so scared and lonely hiding under his bed the week before. 

“Maybe you can live here with us,” Daryl said after watching a few minutes of the movie. 

“I already have a house, buddy. My mommy and daddy would miss me.”

Daryl got off the recliner and tottled around knocking dirty coasters off the coffee table and onto the floor.

“Don’t do that, little guy. You might break something,” Rick said as he picked them up and put them in a neat pile on the end table.

Daryl looked at him with furrowed brows like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. “I ain’t little. I’m big.”

“Oh, well I’m sorry, Sir,” Rick joked, a smile wide on his face. Daryl tried to keep from breaking out into a grin.

“What you got there? Is that your favorite stuffed animal?”

“It’s mine,” Daryl said, his thumb back in his mouth and clutching his squirrel tight. 

“I’m not gonna take it, don’t worry.”

“Pa takes it if I’m bad,” Daryl said around his thumb. “It’s mine.”

“Well, I think you are a good big boy and you deserve to have that little squirrel. Does he have a name?”

Daryl looked at Rick like he was a moron. “He’s just called squirrel.”

“Well, why don’t you and Squirrel come up on the couch and finish the movie? Do you want a glass of milk or juice? I saw there was both in the fridge.”

“Juice,” he mumbled, his eyes now zoned out on the TV. Rick got it for him and put it in a sippy cup. 

“I ain’t a baby,” Daryl insisted. “I don’t need a sippy cup.” Rick saw it in the dish drainer and assumed he still used it, but Daryl seemed old enough, so Rick took off the lid and handed it to him.

When the fox on TV started to do a dance Daryl giggled. “Foxes don’t really dance, Wick,” Daryl said. And then he laughed again and the cup fell out of his hands, spilling apple juice on the tattered sofa cushion. “I’m sorry!!!” he cried and jumped up from his spot, running into his room and climbing under the bed. 

“It was just an accident, Daryl,” Rick said as he walked over to the kitchen to grab some paper towels. After he cleaned up, he went to Daryl’s room and sat cross-legged by the bed. “You aren’t in trouble, buddy. Why yah hiding?”

“So you can’t get me. Go away!” Daryl pouted. 

“I’m not trying to get you. I just thought we could finish the movie. I get bored here if you don’t come out and hang out with me. Daryl was so cute and sweet and Rick thought he’d like to have children one day himself. There was such a pure innocence about children that Rick, at fifteen, was already starting to miss from his own childhood.

“You ain’t gonna punish me?” Daryl asked.

“No, Daryl. We’re friends.”

Daryl crawled out from under the bed, squirrel gripped tight to his chest and eyes narrowed on Rick. “Pa gets really mad when I spill things.”

Rick shrugged. “Well, I’m not mad.”

Daryl finally went back out to the couch and leaned against it to watch more of the movie. Rick sat at the end of the sofa and he kept asking Daryl what kinds of animals were on the screen. The kid seemed to like that game. He answered them all right and eventually sat up on the couch next to Rick. Towards the end of the movie, Daryl laid down, his head on Rick’s leg and his hand picking at a hole in the knee of Rick’s tattered jeans. And eventually Daryl fell asleep. 

Rick carried him to bed and tucked him in. That night Mr. Dixon came home clearly intoxicated again. He mumbled about his old lady up and dying on him and he talked about Daryl like the kid was nothing but a burden. He complained that social services has been checking in and that’s why he had to waste money on a sitter. Rick just tried to smile and nod until he was handed his pay and he walked home, a little worried about some of Daryl’s comments and the way his flight or flight kicked in when he spilled his juice. As uncomfortable as Mr. Dixon made Rick feel, he still took the job each week, hoping to bring a little joy to Daryl’s young life. 

A few months later, Rick was still going over every Friday. He’d brought over his old Connect Four game and taught Daryl how to play. He was a quick learner. Rick could tell that Friday nights were Daryl’s favorite time of the week. He was always eager to see Rick and came out of his room excitedly to greet him the second his father left for the night.

“Wick, I wish you could live here,” Daryl said as he dropped a red plastic circle into the Connect Four game.

“Aww. You miss me when I’m gone, buddy?” Rick asked. He’d noticed the purple-blue around the boy’s eye but didn’t ask any questions.

“Yeah,” Daryl said, his voice small, sad and sincere. Rick dropped his black piece into the game which had clearly left an easy win for the kid, but Daryl just picked at the fur on his squirrel’s tail and zoned out. 

“You alright tonight, buddy?” Rick asked, concerned.

He nodded wordless. 

“Wanna watch a movie instead?”

Daryl nodded again but still didn’t move or look up. 

“Okay. I brought over Monster’s Inc. You want some juice.”

“No. I don’t want no juice no more,” Daryl said as he got up and walked over to the couch, his movements more like a grown up with the weight of the world on his shoulders than a child.

“Ever?” Rick laughed.

“Yeah. Never.”

“And why’s that?” Rick asked after he put the DVD in and sat on the couch. Daryl climbed up and sat on Rick’s lap to watch the movie, his head resting against Rick’s chest and sucking his thumb. Rick pulled the blanket around them and pushed back the recliner. 

“Cause then I won’t spill nothin’.”

“What happened to your eye, kiddo,” Rick asked softly as he rubbed at Daryl’s back.

“I falled.”

“You fell? Are you sure that’s what happened?

 

“Which monster is your favorite, Wick?” Daryl asked, changing the subject.

“I like the blue one. How about you?” Rick tried to keep the sound of sadness out of his voice. He’d been trying not to acknowledge to himself that the boy was being terribly abused. He just didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to know. He’d been pretending for months that it wasn’t as bad as he worried it was.

Daryl fell asleep in his lap and after the movie was over, Rick picked him up and carried him to his bedroom. He woke when Rick put him down in his bed. “Wanna get your pj’s on for me?” Rick asked the sleepy toddler. 

Daryl changed by himself like he always did, but in his sleepy state, he turned and exposed his back to Rick. He hadn’t seen it in all the months he’d been babysitting. It was a map of scars, some fresh and some from probably before Rick even met Daryl.

“Daryl,” Rick gasped. “What happened to your back, sweetheart?”

“I just felled, Wick. It’s okay,” he said as he climbed into bed with his squirrel under his arm.

“Daryl. Talk to me. We’re friends, remember? You can tell me the truth, kiddo,” Rick said as he brushed Daryl’s too long hair out of his eyes. “Did your Daddy do this to you?”

Daryl bolted upright. “No! I falled cause I’m stupid. It’s my fault, Wick. I’m bad a lot.” The boy was terrified and he gripped onto Rick’s arms. Rick just looked at him, waited him out without responding and Daryl finally cracked. “Please, Wick. Don’t tell no one my pa did it cause the cops will come and put me in jail forever for being bad and they won’t let squirrel come.”

“You aren’t bad, sweetheart. Your dad is.” Rick wanted to say more, to tell the kid he could call the cops and put an end to this but Daryl was too young to understand and too scared to keep the conversation going. “You want me to read you a story before you go to bed?

Daryl nodded and popped his thumb back in his mouth, scooting over to make room for Rick. 

“Which book you want tonight?”

“Goodnight Moon,” he mumbled around his thumb.

“You got it, buddy.” Rick grabbed the tattered book off the nightstand and opened it while Daryl scooted closer so he could see the pictures. “In the great green room there was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of the cow jumping over the moon…”

It wasn’t until a few months later, shortly after Daryl’s fifth birthday, that Rick showed up and saw that the kid had a split lip, a limp, and streaks of blood on the back of his t-shirt. And finally, Rick couldn’t pretend and ignore any longer. He made the phone call he should have made a year earlier. He couldn’t save the kid by giving him one fun night a week. This kid needed real help.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'd. Hope you'll like this little mini-fic. It's something different at least! LOL

Rick hated these kind of calls. Armed robbery, no problem. Stealing booze or cigarettes, he could handle. But when the call was about a kid that tried to steal a couple packs of crackers and a jar of peanut butter from a gas station, Rick felt bad having to haul the boy in. It was clearly a desperate attempt from someone down on their luck just to feed themselves. Rick always had a soft spot for people who grew up in bad circumstances and weren’t given the kind of chances in life that he was. He knew he was helping people as a cop, but sometimes he wondered how long he’d be able to do it. Sometimes it was just downright depressing.

He pulled into the Gas-N-Go that he’d responded to several times over the past year and walked in to see the owner still holding his shotgun on a kid that couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen.

“Alright, Dwight. Put the gun away.”

“I can’t afford to keep losing money from these goddamn kids, Rick. I’m pressing full charges.”

“For crackers, Dwight?” Rick asked then turned to the kid whose head was down, long eyelashes focused on the floor, hands in his pockets and his face hidden in his hoodie.

“Lose the hoody, kid. You got any ID?”

“I don’t got no weapon. Didn’t get away with nothin’. Please just let me go, man,” the kid pleaded. He’d clearly never been in trouble with the law yet if he thought it was that easy.

“ID,” Rick repeated reaching out a hand to pull the hoodie back. When the kid looked up at him, Rick saw familiar blue eyes, narrowed at him. Where had he seen that glare before?

“Don’t got a license,” he said.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“You’re sixteen and didn’t rush down to the DMV to get your license?!” Dwight interrupted. “That’s horseshit, kid.”

“Dwight, back off,” RIck warned, his eyes not leaving the kid’s face. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Daryl.”

Rick’s heart sank. He knew those eyes. Knew that soft voice even though it had deepened over the years. “Daryl what?”

“Dixon.” Rick saw him look up at the name on his uniform and Daryl flinched when he finally recognized Rick just a moment after Rick recognized him. “Come on, Daryl. Let me get you in the squad car. We’ll work this out at the station. Dwight, I’ll be right back in.”

Rick put a gentle hand on Daryl’s upper arm and walked him to the car and helped him in. “Hang tight, buddy. Let me see what I can do about the charges,” Rick said, then he shut the doors and locked Daryl in.

When he walked back to the cash register, he took his hat off and put his hand on the counter. “Look, Dwight. The kid wasn’t armed. He was just hungry. I knew him when he was just a toddler, four, five years old. Had a rough life and it doesn’t look like it got any better since I last saw him. Do me a favor and drop the charges, will yah? I’ll talk to him. Promise you won’t ever have to worry about him again.”

Dwight sighed and scratched at his matted hair. “I ain’t running a charity here, Grimes.”

“But you’ll do it because deep down you’re a decent caring person, right?”

Dwight rolled his eyes. “You ain’t changed much since high school, Rick. Damn do-gooder. Fine. Let him go but you better believe I’mma be bichin’ up a storm if I see his ass in here again.”

“Thank you, Dwight. I won’t forget it.” Rick pointed to the peanut butter and crackers that still sat on the counter. “That what he was trying to take?”

Dwight nodded. 

“Ring it up. I’ll buy it,” 

Dwight rolled his eyes, shook his head and charged Rick $7.15 for his purchase. Rick went out to the cruiser, opened the back door and tossed in the bag, then got in the driver’s side and started the car.

“Dropped the charges,” Rick said.

“You buy me these?” Daryl asked.

“Mhm. Must be hungry, right?”

Daryl was quiet for a few streets. “If he dropped the charges, where ya bringin’ me?”

Rick could recognize the look of someone who’d taken to sleeping on the streets and his guess was that Daryl had run off from whatever foster home he’d been in and dropped out of school. “You got a place to sleep tonight?”

“I always make do, Rick. Not quite sure why you’re playing like you care. You fucking abandoned me. I know who you are. You never came back.”

“You were gone, Daryl. Social Services wouldn’t tell me what foster home they put you in.”

“Was only there a few months and they sent me back to my Pa. Waited for you every damn night for years.”

“Shit,” Rick whispered. “Daryl, I had no idea they’d sent you back. If I’d have known-”

“Fuck off.”

They spent the next twenty minutes in silence. Rick wasn’t even sure what he was doing. He was literally driving aimlessly in circles around town. He just knew he couldn’t let Daryl go sleep wherever the hell it was he slept. Clearly he’d left home with nothing but the clothes on his back. He remembered that sweet little kid from so long ago and it broke his heart that his life hadn’t turned out like Rick had always hoped. That was Rick’s problem- he was an optimist who thought he could fix everyone and everything. And if he learned anything in his short time of being a cop, it was that there’s a lot of shit out there that can’t be fixed. He wasn’t giving up on this one though. Little Daryl had been the main reason he’d gone into the academy in the first place. 

“I understand why you feel like I abandoned you, Daryl. And I’m not gonna lie to you. I was the one that called social services after your fifth birthday. Those bruises… Christ, Daryl, you were five years old and you could barely walk. I couldn’t turn a blind eye anymore no matter how much you pleaded with me not to say anything. I knew you worried he’d be worse if he got in trouble, but I was afraid he was gonna end up killing you.”

Daryl didn’t respond but Rick watched him in the rearview as he put a thumbnail to his lips and started biting at the nail.

“Where you driving me? Cause I done left home and I ain’t going back. You know you can’t leave me with him.”

“I know that.” Rick heard the sound of the crackers open and watched through the mirror as Daryl ate them like a starved dog, then he opened the peanut butter and ate some with his fingers. “Thank you for the food,” he finally said after he’d sated his hunger. 

“Do me a favor, Daryl. Stay at my place tonight. I can make up the couch. I just can’t drop you off in the middle of nowhere. It would help my conscience if you’d just let me get you off the street for a night.”

“Fine,” Daryl mumbled, his thumbnail back in his mouth. 

When they got back to Rick’s place, Daryl walked in with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slumped like he was still trying to make himself as small as possible. It reminded Rick of when he used to hide under his bed and it almost made him want to cry. 

Rick got a towel for him and handed him a pair of his old grey sweats. “Why don’t you take a hot shower. Toss your clothes out and I’ll get them washed. I’ll make some popcorn and we can watch a movie, huh?”

“You’re still just as nice as I remember, Rick,” Daryl said softly in a voice that seemed like that four year-old-kid Rick had felt so fiercely protective of. “Sorry I told you to fuck of. It's just become my default response. Just ain’t used to nice.”

“It's okay, Daryl. I can handle a ‘fuck off’’.

When Daryl came out of the bathroom with damp towel-dried, hair and Rick’s sweats sitting low on his hips, Rick took notice for the first time that baby Daryl was becoming a man. Though he tended to keep his shoulders hunched, Rick could see how broad they’d become. His chest was smooth but a light trail of hair formed under his belly button and trailed down past the sweatpants. And he'd gotten tall, hell he was as tall as Rick was despite Rick being nine years older.

He suddenly realized when he noticed some scaring coming around the tops of his shoulder that he'd been staring far too long. Rick had come out when he was around Daryl’s age but had only had a few boyfriends. He couldn’t help admiring Daryl like a man now instead of a boy even though he was still so much younger. Sixteen was legal consent in the state of Georgia but Rick still felt like a perve for even thinking about Daryl like that. That wasn’t what this was.

“Sorry, zoned out,” Rick said as he turned back to grab two bottles of soda and the bowl of popcorn.

“It’s okay if you… if you want something from me in return for the stay. I done it before. To make money to get by. I can suck your-”

“Jesus, Daryl!” Rick said, dropping one of the sodas he had tucked under his arm. “I didn’t bring you here for that.”

“I know what guys want when they look at me like that, Rick. How you think I been getting by?”

“I don’t like to think about you doing those things. You’re too young and it’s… it’s illegal.”

Daryl laughed. “It’s better than Pa takin’ the belt to me every night. I kinda like it. Like making the John’s happy with me. Always had an oral fixation. Sucked my thumb til I was thirteen.”

Rick picked up the fallen soda and put the snack and drinks on the coffee table. “Well, that’s not what this is. We’re friends.”

Daryl’s mouth turned up into a weak smile, his eyes hazy with memory. “You always used to tell me that.” He sat down on one end of the couch and Rick sat on the other. “Wanted you to live with me and be my dad. I remember praying for that every night. That my Pa would die and you would live take care of me.”

“I became a cop because of you, y’know. Wanted to save all the little Daryl’s in the world.” Rick turned on the TV and pulled up a movie. They shifted into silence as they watched and Daryl started to doze off. “Hey,” Rick said, giving him a nudge. “You don’t gotta stay up. I can finish the movie tomorrow, give you the couch.”

“No. It’s okay,” Daryl said in that soft, meek voice of his. “Stay here.” He curled up on the couch and rested his head tentatively on Rick’s lap facing the TV just like when he was little. Rick ran fingers through Daryl’s long hair, comforting him as Daryl played with the seam on Rick’s jeans.

Once the movie ended, Rick turned off the TV and the living room fell into darkness. Rick stayed where he was thinking he’d stay like that all night if he had to so Daryl could get a good night’s sleep.

“I get nightmare’s a lot,” Daryl said, startling Rick. 

“Didn’t realize you were still awake.”

“Fight sleep sometime. Cause… I end up back home.” He sat up rubbing at his eyes.

“Daryl, I’m going to head to bed. If you… if you think you’ll sleep better with someone there, you can come with me. But I’m not looking for anything sexual from you. If you just need some comfort, I have it to give.”

“Can I sleep with my head on your chest?” he asked.

“Sure, kiddo,” Rick answered.

“Ain’t no kid no more, Rick. But I won’t try anything with you. I promise. Just glad to have you with me for one day.”

They walked back to Rick’s room and Daryl slid under the covers and rested his head on Rick’s chest. After a while, Rick allowed himself to wrap his arms around Daryl, rubbing a warm hand over his arm.

“It’s nice to be feel safe,” Daryl said groggily.

“Look,” Rick said. “I have an office that I don’t really use. And I owe you for never getting a chance to say goodbye. I can set that up for you if you want to stay for a while. Maybe go back to school and try to graduate.”

Daryl sat up and looked down at Rick. “I need to be able to do something for you, Rick. Don’t want to take advantage of the only person in the world who ever cared about me.”

Rick smiled. Daryl’s circumstances may not have ended up the way Rick had hoped for him, but he still had the same sweet, affectionate disposition.

“You know how to cook?”

“Yeah, had to or else I’d starve back home.”

“Tell you what then, you stay here. You go back and finish school. And you can cook and maybe mow the lawn for me. Chores like that. You’d be helping me out, man. The microwave popcorn was my specialty. And I’m always too tired after my shifts to mow.”

Rick put a hand on Daryl’s back, trying not to cringe at all the rigid raised scar tissue there and gently encouraged him to lay back down. Essentially he’d be giving Daryl what he’d been asking for since he was a child. A real home.

“Why you wanna do all this for me?” Daryl asked.

“Because we’re friends.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Just give me a couple weeks to dot all my i's and cross all my t's and I'll start posting my College AU. 
> 
> I also apologize again that I haven't been able to write and post as much as I had been. New job, long commute, just a lot of changes in general in real life so I'm not quite able to crank them out like I used to!

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry I haven't posted anything in ages! New job. Lots of real life stuff and thangs to deal with. Chap 2/2 for this will go up tomorrow. And I'm hard at work finishing up the college AU which should be ready to post in a couple weeks.


End file.
